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Team News: Wenger’s update on Ramsey, Ozil, Giroud & Coquelin

By on October 13, 2016

aaron ramsey arsenal

It’s been another busy day of team and injury news at Arsenal HQ so I thought I’d bring you a round-up of what Arsene Wenger has been saying today.

The boss held his pre-match news conference on Thursday morning ahead of Saturday’s clash with Swansea City and he confirmed that Aaron Ramsey will continue to miss out as he’s still not fully recovered from a niggling hamstring injury which he initially suffered on the opening weekend of the season.

After suffering some setbacks in training, Arsene says Ramsey needs to build-up his fitness and while he’s not thought to be too far away, he’s still expected to miss next weeks Champions League clash with Ludogorets.

In a double blow, the boss also confirmed that Olivier Giroud remains sidelined with a toe injury that he picked up against PSG last month and like Rambo, the striker now needs to work on his fitness after returning to light training today.

However, there was some good news as Wenger revealed that Francis Coquelin is back in contention after overcoming a knee injury that he sustained against Chelsea three weeks ago.

The boss also confirmed that Mesut Ozil has declared himself fit despite fears he’d picked up a knock following his substitution at half-time during Germany’s win over Northern Ireland earlier this week.

Here is what the boss told Arsenal.com:

on the latest team news…
Giroud will not be available for Saturday and Aaron Ramsey will not be available, but Francis Coquelin is back available and apparently we have good news. I have not seen everybody coming back from international games but we have quite good news.

on Ozil’s fitness…
He told us he’s completely fit. We’ll see that today, if we have no bad news today. I see him later. I expect him to be available, especially because he’s only played one half, so he doesn’t need to be rested on Saturday.

on Ramsey not being ready yet…
I must say I’m disappointed because he has worked very hard. He’s at the last stage of building up his fitness and he’s not far away.

on if Ramsey has a chance to play next week…
Next week will come too early.

on what the problem is…
It’s a bit of a vicious circle. He had a little setback, so we rested him. The longer that lasts, the more time you have to dedicate to build up his fitness again because he has been out for four weeks. Then you have to basically create a new three-week preparation to get him up to the level he was at before the injury. It’s more the time it takes to rebuild his fitness. We have decided that we’ll give him a complete pre-season, even if he misses one or two more games.

on Giroud…
Giroud will be a little bit the same because he has been out now, he has still not been on the pitches. I think he starts to have a jog again today for the first time so he has been interrupted a lot in his preparation. We have to build his fitness up again.

So the squad is in decent health heading in to the Swansea game with our long-term absentees Per Mertesacker and Danny Welbeck the only other players missing from the squad this weekend.